Prism? America Yawned 13 yrs ago

If Edward Snowden Had Watched '60 Minutes' In High School He Could Still Be Living In Hawaii With His Beautiful Girlfriend
By NICHOLAS CARLSON

Former IT guy Edward Snowden, 29, is not in a good position right now.
He's stuck in Hong Kong, waiting to be interrogated by Chinese officials.

These Chinese officials are going to ask him to turn over thousands of secret documents he stole from the NSA, a client of his former employer, Booz Allen.

If Snowden does what these Chinese officials ask, he'll reveal American security secrets to one of America's biggest security threats.

If Snowden does not hand over documents to China, he may face extradition back to the United States where life in prison is a very real possibility.

Meanwhile, Snowden is apart from his beautiful, live-in, pole-dancing girlfriend. She's in Hawaii. She's been writing on the Internet about how she feels "lost and alone."

Snowden is also now out of his job at Booz Allen, where he was getting paid $125,000 to $200,000 per year.

Snowden got himself in this position by using his systems administrator's access to the NSA's network to download thousands of secret files onto a thumb drive, and then handing over the contents of this thumb drive to reporters at The Guardian and The Washington Post.

And for what reason did Snowden do this?

He was hoping for a revolution.

Snowden told The Guardian that he believes the documents he leaked reveal that "the NSA and the intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible."

He said the documents show that, through an Internet spying program called PRISM, "Any analyst at any time can target anyone ... I sitting at my desk certainly have the authorities to wiretap anyone — from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President."

He said his hope is that these disclosures will force "the public ... to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong."

There are two major problems with Snowden's plan.

One is small. One is big.

The small problem with Snowden's plan is that the information contained in his documents appears to be false or incomplete. They said that PRISM gave the NSA direct access to the servers of companies like Google and Facebook. That's not true.

The big problem with Snowden's plan to shock the American public into an anti-surveillance revolution is that the documents he leaked contained only old news.

There is a report out today from the AP saying that it has been "known for years," that there is a program which "copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis."

In fact, the American public has known that the NSA has extensive Internet-spying programs since 2000.

That's when "60 Minutes" reported: "If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency."

The "60 Minutes" report exposed the existence of a program called Echelon, through which the governments of Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand worked in coordination to spy on each other's citizens on the Internet.

If you read the transcript from that "60 Minutes" episode, Echelon sounds like a more invasive program than PRISM.

"60 Minutes" is a massively popular news program. Ten million, sometimes 20 million people, watch it every Sunday. Even more watched it back in 2000.

And yet, the American public reacted to "60 Minutes'" expose with a yawn.

Since Snowden's leaks, many people have passed around an old quote from Benjamin Franklin.

It reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

It turns out the American public disagrees with Benjamin Franklin on this count.

We are willing to trade a little online liberty for a little offline security.

This is not irrational. We do not live in the world as described by George Orwell's book, "1984." In "1984" the government uses a fake war as an excuse to spy on its people. In our world, the war is real. It kills people at marathons, in office buildings, and on bases in Texas.

The point is this.

If any report on the NSA's Internet-spying powers was going to shock the American public into action, it was that "60 Minutes" report 13 years ago.

It did not.

Neither did a 2005 report from The New York Times about how the NSA monitors the Internet's fiber optic cables.

Nor did former AT&T technician Mark Klein's 2006 revelation that the NSA installed a computer at a San Francisco switching center.

And so, the sad, final truth is this.

If, back before he dropped out of high school, 16-year-old Edward Snowden had just managed to see that "60 Minutes" report and witness the collective yawn that followed, he might have, 13 years later, decided that the American public would never share his fear of surveillance.

He might still be living in Hawaii with his beautiful, pole-dancing girlfriend, working a job with a ~$200,ooo salary.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/60-minutes-reported-nsa-spying-in-2000-2013-6#ixzz2WKgp66dY

I reject that this did not accomplish anything.  What he did was perfectly timed in that all these other crimes, not "scandals", are coming to light in government.  It highlighted crimes taking place.  Whether they want to call them legal or not, they breach the constitution and what he has done points this out.  So, again, I reject that what he did is not going to be a part of the cumulative revelations now coming to light

I'm in agreement with Warrior Shepard!
And your quote:
"Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, Who mix in your venom even to make them drunk so as to look on their nakedness! You will be filled with disgrace rather than honor. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness." Habakkuk 2:15

This is exactly what the media does these days, they make us drink their mix!
They HOLD US DOWN AND POUR IT IN OUR MINDS UNTIL WE ACCEPT THAT WHICH THEY HAVE FORCED US TO DRINK, this done in repeated broadcasts to make sure the mind of 2nd graders (adults) are sure to believe it to be true.

Wake up! Or I'll have to ram my own opposite version of what real men see of this broken country!
You won't like it because it is the truth!

No I'm not mad at anyone here. Honest.

I once met a guy while in the service... no one liked him because he spoke his mind, much of it truth.
I learned a lot from him after becoming his friend. I listened to what he said around others and what their reactions were to the truth he spoke, and I saw that people in general don't like a person that can speak his mind, and much less if it be truth. They can't handle the harsh reality of truth that shatters this MATRIX lie perpetrated on us by these so called TRUSTED broadcasters and news people.

Rejected! EEEEEH!

I haven't watched 60 min. since I was a child at my  Grandma's house.

Spring and Warrior, I agree and Spring, you were inspiring!

I'm glad Snowden (cool name btw) did speak up. If not him, then who? God spoke and he answered "Here I am. Send me Lord." Thank you Snowden for speaking up.

http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2428809

3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so

by Peter Eisler and Susan Page, USA TODAY
When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.
Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.
For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.
To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime.
Today, they feel vindicated.
They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who worked as a systems administrator, proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. They say those revelations only hint at the programs' reach.
On Friday, USA TODAY brought Drake, Binney and Wiebe together for the first time since the story broke to discuss the NSA revelations. With their lawyer, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, they weighed their implications and their repercussions. They disputed the administration's claim of the impact of the disclosures on national security — and President Obama's argument that Congress and the courts are providing effective oversight.
And they have warnings for Snowden on what he should expect next.
Q: Did Edward Snowden do the right thing in going public?
William Binney: We tried to stay for the better part of seven years inside the government trying to get the government to recognize the unconstitutional, illegal activity that they were doing and openly admit that and devise certain ways that would be constitutionally and legally acceptable to achieve the ends they were really after. And that just failed totally because no one in Congress or — we couldn't get anybody in the courts, and certainly the Department of Justice and inspector general's office didn't pay any attention to it. And all of the efforts we made just produced no change whatsoever. All it did was continue to get worse and expand.
Q: So Snowden did the right thing?
Binney: Yes, I think he did.
Q: You three wouldn't criticize him for going public from the start?
J. Kirk Wiebe: Correct.
Binney: In fact, I think he saw and read about what our experience was, and that was part of his decision-making.
Wiebe: We failed, yes.
Jesselyn Radack: Not only did they go through multiple and all the proper internal channels and they failed, but more than that, it was turned against them. ... The inspector general was the one who gave their names to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act. And they were all targets of a federal criminal investigation, and Tom ended up being prosecuted — and it was for blowing the whistle.
Q: There's a question being debated whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor.
Binney: Certainly he performed a really great public service to begin with by exposing these programs and making the government in a sense publicly accountable for what they're doing. At least now they are going to have some kind of open discussion like that.
But now he is starting to talk about things like the government hacking into China and all this kind of thing. He is going a little bit too far. I don't think he had access to that program. But somebody talked to him about it, and so he said, from what I have read, anyway, he said that somebody, a reliable source, told him that the U.S. government is hacking into all these countries. But that's not a public service, and now he is going a little beyond public service.
So he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor.
Thomas Drake: He's an American who has been exposed to some incredible information regarding the deepest secrets of the United States government. And we are seeing the initial outlines and contours of a very systemic, very broad, a Leviathan surveillance state and much of it is in violation of the fundamental basis for our own country — in fact, the very reason we even had our own American Revolution. And the Fourth Amendment for all intents and purposes was revoked after 9/11. ...
He is by all definitions a classic whistle-blower and by all definitions he exposed information in the public interest. We're now finally having the debate that we've never had since 9/11.
READ MORE@LINK

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/skynet-to-launch-october-2013.html

SNIPPETS:
But what we do learn from the media’s focus on this “new shocking revelation” is that the technology of secret, off-the-record, underground intelligence operations working for either a breakaway civilization, living side by side with earth’s existing civilizations, or operated as a spook operation serving a multinational global elite seeking to control and rule the world, is far more advanced than previously believed. Moreover, it would seem likely this new “leak” is just another bit of predictive programming designed to alert the world something even bigger is already in the works.

“Cyberdyne Systems” 2013

At the center of the data center will be one of the world's most powerful computers ever built (at least as far as we art told). The so-called, and named with a wink to triangle-worshipping cults, ‘Titan Supercomputer’ will come alive and for the first time operate at the speed necessary and with the memory required to become conscious.

READ MORE@LINK!!!!!!!!